OAN Staff Blake Wolf
8:28 AM – Thursday, December 4, 2025
The FBI has arrested a suspect linked to the pipe bombs placed outside the Republican and Democratic National Committee headquarters on January 5, 2021.
The arrest represents a major breakthrough in the nearly five-year investigation, which had previously stalled because the suspect’s mask, glasses, and gloves concealed their identity.
According to a Fox News report, the individual — a man living in Virginia — was taken into custody early Thursday morning to discuss the pipe bomb incident. He was not named in the Fox report. However, a Newsweek report stated that the man’s name is Brian Cole.
Though none of the devices detonated, investigators determined the explosives were viable and could have caused “serious injury or death” if they had exploded.
The devices were found roughly 17 hours after they were initially planted, approximately the same time as Congress gathered to count the 2020 electoral votes.
“This is a testament to the painstaking efforts of the career agents and prosecutors who have worked on this case for years,” said former U.S. attorney Gregory Rosen. “While we don’t know all the facts yet, we should be proud that the F.B.I. has continued to investigate thoroughly.”
Before the arrest, the FBI stated that its investigation into the matter included over 1,000 interviews, a review of over 39,000 video files, and the examination of over 600 public tips.
The lack of an arrest led to widespread conspiracy theories, including those by Dan Bongino, the now-FBI Deputy Director.
“There is a massive cover-up, because the person who planted those pipe bombs — they don’t want you to know who it was, because it’s either a connected anti-Trump insider, or this was an inside job,” Bongino stated on The Dan Bongino Show in November 2024. “Those bombs were planted there. This was a setup. I have zero doubt.”
However, on November 8, 2025, The Blaze released an article claiming that a former U.S. Capitol Police officer’s gate is a “94%-98% match to the unique stride” of the pipe bomber suspect seen on security camera footage, noting that the claim was confirmed by “intelligence sources.”
The report went on to imply that a source close to a congressional investigation on the matter told the outlet that emerging evidence pointed toward law enforcement’s involvement in the planting of the pipe bombs, naming 31-year-old Shauni Rae Kerkhoff of Alexandria, Virginia, a former Capitol Police officer who went on to work at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as a suspect in the case.
The report claimed that a software algorithm analyzed the “walking parameters including flexion (knee bend), hip extension, speed, step length, cadence, and variance,” to ultimately rate Kerkhoff as a “94% match to the bomb suspect shown on video from Jan. 5, 2021.” However, a veteran analyst told the outlet that he believes the match is closer to 98%.
In response to the report, Bongino released an X post, announcing that a “week of near 24-hour work on RECENT open source leads in the case has yet to produce a break through, and some of the media reporting regarding prior persons of interest is grossly inaccurate and serves only to mislead the public.”
The breakthrough information leading to the recent arrest has yet to be disclosed by the Bureau.
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